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We have seen elsewhere that the Good, the Principle, is
simplex, and, correspondingly, primal- for the secondary can
never be simplex- that it contains nothing: that it is an
integral Unity.
Now the same Nature belongs to the Principle we know as The One.
just as the goodness of The Good is essential and not the
outgrowth of some prior substance so the Unity of The One is its
essential.
Therefore:
When we speak of The One and when we speak of The Good we must
recognize an Identical Nature; we must affirm that they are the
same- not, it is true, as venturing any predication with regard
to that [unknowable] Hypostasis but simply as indicating it to
ourselves in the best terms we find.
Even in calling it "The First" we mean no more than to express
that it is the most absolutely simplex: it is the Self-Sufficing
only in the sense that it is not of that compound nature which
would make it dependent upon any constituent; it is "the
Self-Contained" because everything contained in something alien
must also exist by that alien.
Deriving, then, from nothing alien, entering into nothing alien,
in no way a made-up thing, there can be nothing above it.
We need not, then, go seeking any other Principles; this- the One
and the Good- is our First; next to it follows the Intellectual
Principle, the Primal Thinker; and upon this follows Soul. Such
is the order in nature. The Intellectual Realm allows no more
than these and no fewer.
Those who hold to fewer Principles must hold the identity of
either Intellectual-Principle and Soul or of
Intellectual-Principle and The First; but we have abundantly
shown that these are distinct.
It remains for us to consider whether there are more than these
Three.
Now what other [Divine] Kinds could there be? No Principles of
the universe could be found at once simpler and more transcendent
than this whose existence we have affirmed and described.
They will scarcely urge upon us the doubling of the Principle in
Act by a Principle in Potentiality. It is absurd to seek such a
plurality by distinguishing between potentiality and actuality in
the case of immaterial beings whose existence is in Act- even in
lower forms no such division can be made and we cannot conceive a
duality in the Intellectual-Principle, one phase in some vague
calm, another all astir. Under what form can we think of repose
in the Intellectual Principle as contrasted with its movement or
utterance? What would the quiescence of the one phase be as
against the energy of the others?
No: the Intellectual-Principle is continuously itself,
unchangeably constituted in stable Act. With movement- towards it
or within it- we are in the realm of the Soul's operation: such
act is a Reason-Principle emanating from it and entering into
Soul, thus made an Intellectual Soul, but in no sense creating an
intermediate Principle to stand between the two.
Nor are we warranted in affirming a plurality of Intellectual
Principles on the ground that there is one that knows and thinks
and another knowing that it knows and thinks. For whatever
distinction be possible in the Divine between its Intellectual
Act and its Consciousness of that Act, still all must be one
projection not unaware of its own operation: it would be absurd
to imagine any such unconsciousness in the Authentic
Intelligence; the knowing principle must be one and the selfsame
with that which knows of the knowing.
The contrary supposition would give us two beings, one that
merely knows, and another separate being that knows of the act of
knowing.
If we are answered that the distinction is merely a process of
our thought, then, at once, the theory of a plurality in the
Divine Hypostasis is abandoned: further, the question is opened
whether our thought can entertain a knowing principle so narrowed
to its knowing as not to know that it knows- a limitation which
would be charged as imbecility even in ourselves, who if but of
very ordinary moral force are always master of our emotions and
mental processes.
No: The Divine Mind in its mentation thinks itself; the object of
the thought is nothing external: Thinker and Thought are one;
therefore in its thinking and knowing it possesses itself,
observes itself and sees itself not as something unconscious but
as knowing: in this Primal Knowing it must include, as one and
the same Act, the knowledge of the knowing; and even the logical
distinction mentioned above cannot be made in the case of the
Divine; the very eternity of its self-thinking precludes any such
separation between that intellective act and the consciousness of
the act.
The absurdity becomes still more blatant if we introduce yet a
further distinction- after that which affirms the knowledge of
the knowing, a third distinction affirming the knowing of the
knowledge of the knowing: yet there is no reason against carrying
on the division for ever and ever.
To increase the Primals by making the Supreme Mind engender the
Reason-Principle, and this again engender in the Soul a distinct
power to act as mediator between Soul and the Supreme Mind, this
is to deny intellection to the Soul, which would no longer derive
its Reason from the Intellectual-Principle but from an
intermediate: the Soul then would possess not the
Reason-Principle but an image of it: the Soul could not know the
Intellectual-Principle; it could have no intellection.
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